The field of communications has become increasingly important in today's society. In particular, the ability to quickly and to effectively interact with an individual (through any suitable communications media) presents a significant obstacle for component manufacturers, system designers, and network operators. This obstacle is made even more difficult due to the plethora of diverse communication technologies that exist in the current marketplace.
As new communication platforms become available to the consumer, new protocols need to be developed in order to optimize these emerging technologies. For example, some problems often encountered in any communications environment relate to the limited availability of bandwidth. This may be particularly problematic in the case of shared line devices (i.e. one or more devices that share a directory number such that when the directory number is dialed, several devices would ostensibly ring). The deficiency in properly accommodating shared line devices may cause certain calls to fail, or cause bandwidth to be erroneously assigned to certain connections that will not be utilized. Accordingly, the ability to adequately service shared line devices presents an obstacle for any employee, employer, individual, or endpoint that seeks to execute successful communication sessions.